Allen, David. Getting
Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity.
Shepard, Sara. Pretty
Little Liars. New York, NY: Penguin Group, 2001. Print.
259 pages
Reviewed by Jessica
d'Artagnan Love
This book was
recommended to me numerous times by the driven, ambitious women in my life.
They all swear by Allen’s method of organization and productivity. So, I added
the book to my list and finally got around to reading it. Allen’s main purpose
is to provide a productivity system that will allow you to focus so you don’t
get random thoughts popping into your head about the things you need to be
doing. Those random thoughts are distracting and decrease productivity and he
claims his system will eliminate the distraction.
Honestly? This book is
summed up in the first chapter. That is all you really need to read of it to
understand and implement the system. It is a simple process that goes something
like this: collect all your tasks, decide what needs to be done with those
tasks, decide how you will do them, and do them. He offers some random
interesting ideas like working from the bottom up—getting the easy stuff out of
the way first so you can concentrate on the big things. He also has an interesting
idea of having a “tickler file” system to organize your daily to-dos. The phrase
“tickler file” kind of gave me the creeps, though. Aside from that, he basically
describes a bullet journal system which I think works better than his exhaustive
method.
I blame a lot of the
problems with this book on the editor and publisher. Allen has some ideas that
would work for a magazine article and that’s about it. In order to get a full
book out of the concept, he had to squeeze all possible minutiae of the process
out onto paper and it really felt like he was struggling to make word count
because it was repetitive. A publisher saw a chance to make some
money and jumped on it instead of producing something of higher quality.
Some of the things I will apply in my life from this book include his workflow chart for processing email, mail, and paperwork. I am also going to try out working from the "bottom up" by finishing the easy tasks first so they don't clutter my brain and I can focus on the big tasks with more clarity. We'll see how it goes!
Would I read it again?
No.
Recommended for
If you’re not familiar
with the bullet journal system this might be helpful to read in conjunction with information online about the basics of the bullet journal method. Read the first chapter fully and then feel free to pick and choose what you read of the book from there.
Not Recommended for
Readers who are
already organized. Those who use a bullet journal system.
Word Bank
·
None
2 star out of 5
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